1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications systems, including wireless telecommunications systems which implement data transmission via radio channels. More specifically, the invention relates to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems and methods for data transmission between RFID tags and RFID reader interrogators.
2. State of the Art
Wireless communications technology has been showing a continuous strong trend to utilize multi-position Phase Shift Keying (PSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) techniques. A majority of wireless systems are based on modulation techniques such as Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), 16-QAM, and 64-QAM. These modulation techniques are standardized for current and future mobile and fixed wireless systems including IEEE 802.16 standard systems for fixed, portable, mobile broadband wireless access. The most popular techniques are QPSK and 16-QAM. The 16-QAM modulation technique is based on a 16-point constellation located at the nodes of a square array.
16-QAM signal modulation is considered one of the most promising candidates for future RFID systems, which aim to achieve a considerable increase in data rate. The quest for providing a higher bit rate has already been realized to some extent in the 2nd generation (Gen 2 or G2) RFID specification. Considerable advancement in the RFID tag design has also opened up new opportunities for data rate improvement based on utilization of QAM signals. However, QAM signal processing in RFID receivers needs further improvement.
Receivers used in G2 systems as well as the previous first Generation (Gen 1 or G1) systems have restricted ability for data rate improvement because both systems utilize binary signals with amplitude modulation only. It has been established that coherent signal processing, where both amplitude and phase are modulated, provides a considerable energy gain compared to non-coherent processing in the case of multiposition QAM modulation. During a data session in RFID channels with fast changing parameters, coherent signal processing requires continuous phase and amplitude adjustment. These adjustments include initial phase and amplitude estimation during the transmission of a signal preamble, and phase and amplitude tracking during data transmission. Present methods of carrier recovery work well for PSK modulation, but are not efficient for QAM because of the difficulties involved in demodulating an amplitude keying signal.
Many of the present demodulation or carrier recovery schemes for QAM signals are based on a process flow which does not utilize any feedback. Furthermore, many of the present implementations rely on relatively complicated decision circuitry.
Thus, what is needed are methods and apparatuses for further improvement of RFID QAM based readers configured for base-band processing of signal constellations.